


And Five Hundred More

by luninosity



Series: 500 Miles [2]
Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Clothing Kink, Collars, Deleted Scenes, Dom/sub, Explicit Sexual Content, Happy Ending, Healing, Kissing, Love, M/M, Oral Sex, Wedding Fluff, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-07-02
Packaged: 2018-01-18 22:22:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1444978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Extra scenes from the Five Hundred Miles epic.</p><p>In the first one, Erik very helpfully assists Charles with getting dressed to go out.<br/>In the second one, it's their wedding day, and Charles has a surprise for Erik.<br/>In the third one, Erik has a present for Charles, on their wedding night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. getting ready (charles)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ook](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ook/gifts).



> Can be read as fairly stand-alone, but if you're wondering, the first one takes place near the end, probably between chapters 22 and 23, after Erik's proposed but before they've done any wedding planning. The other two come in after the end. :-)

“Erik,” Charles says. “I am entirely capable of dressing myself. Of putting clothing on myself. _By_ myself.”   
  
“Yes,” Erik says, “what’s your point, Charles,” and rests hands proprietarily over Charles’s hips, tucking crisp white dress-shirt fabric into dark trousers. Those hands bite down just a fraction on the good side of too hard; Charles breathes in, somewhat inadvertently.   
  
Erik shows off all those teeth. “Not objecting, then.”   
  
“Not…precisely…also, since when do you even take an interest in my clothing? Aren’t artists meant to not give a damn about social convention?” That one isn’t exactly fair; while Erik’s favorite turtlenecks and black-brown leather combinations _suggest_ utter disregard for fashion, they in fact exist right at the pinnacle of stylish cut and fit and fabric, and wrap around Erik’s lean frame like beguiling sin.   
  
Outside, the afternoon’s silver and satin, pearl-mist and silk. The taste of rain shimmers through the air, watery and cool and elated. Inside, in their bedroom, the towers of colorful second-hand science-fiction peek up from beside the bed, intrigued and entertained. Charles’s laptop sits open on the desk across the room, displaying his calendar: date, time, location for the evening’s dinner gala. A museum. Expensive. Opulent.   
  
“We don’t have to go,” he attempts. “We could stay. We could get undressed, and stay in, and play chess.”   
  
Erik’s hands pause. Hover over the middle button of his shirt, precisely halfway. “Is your knee bothering you? Or—anything else?”   
  
Charles sighs. “No.”   
  
He could say yes, but that’d be a lie, or ninety percent of one. Most of the damage from Shaw’s boots, hands, toys, cock—he flinches, but only in his head, unnoticeable; not Erik’s fault, and if Erik sees then they will end up staying home, and not for enjoyable reasons—most of it’s healed. His knee aches a little, but that’s from the weather. Not why he wants to stay in.   
  
_ Want _ is different from _should_ , however. And they’ll have other nights to cuddle and drink wine and make love to the rhythm of the rain. Lots of other nights. So many nights, to come. The pun’s unintended but apt; and makes him smile to himself.   
  
He looks up. Meets Erik’s pale eyes, all green-grey-blue, worried lakewater opals. “I’m all right. I need to be there. Only heir, recognizable name, public support, and all that. Even if I have sold the company. It matters.”   
  
They’ve had that discussion already. Erik nods. “I’ll be right there with you. As long as you want to stay. We’ll leave as soon as you decide we can.”   
  
“Thank you,” Charles says, and touches Erik’s hand with his own, briefly. “Sir.”   
  
Erik now looks surprised. Pleased startlement in the light-glinting tidepools. “Already? Now?”   
  
“Well, you did rather instruct me to stand still and let you dress me however you’d like…” Charles grins. Lets the honest emotion surface under that: yes, please, this helps, you help, being here, being my anchor, being my Dominant, being a shoulder I can accept if I can’t stand on my own.   
  
And Erik nods again, and leans down to kiss him, one hand sliding to the back of Charles’s neck, proprietary and steady and exuberant as their heartbeats, under the rustle of new rain. “I did give you an order. If you can stand; if you can’t, sit. Don’t wait to ask me, if you’re in pain.”   
  
“I’m not,” Charles says peacefully, and watches Erik’s hands as they finish the line of buttons. Erik has lovely hands. Long-fingered sculptor’s hands. Like art, themselves. “No belt?”   
  
“I do take an interest in your clothing,” Erik notes, “on occasion. Here.”   
  
“Oh…” Erik’s holding braces—suspenders, he reminds himself, here in New York; ridiculous Americanisms, but both words apply. The suspense, as Erik’s artist’s hands tug casually at slim black elastic, making it stretch, the way it will against his body. A brace, support, elegant posture—hinting at more, at some of the other items in those drawers. Restraints. Reminders. The corset they’ve used, once or twice, when Erik feels like dressing Charles up and pulling laces tight through metal hooks, leaving him breathless and dizzy with the thrill, the titillation, the curves of his waist and hip shaped by Erik’s desire. His own moans and pants for inadequate air as Erik’s cock plunges into him, thick flushed length and Charles’s stretched gaping hole and black leather over pale skin, all slick and filthy and obscene as Erik comes, as Erik’s come drips and spills out of him while Charles whines and begs, untouched cock rock-hard between his legs…   
  
All of that’s in Erik’s smile. In Charles’s sudden need for oxygen, as Erik lazily twists sleek black fabric through powerful hands.   
  
“Oh god,” Charles says again, a little weakly. “I’m not—I can’t—Erik, we’re going to be out in public, at a museum, there’ll be stockholders and CEOs and—and friends of my mother’s, and—”   
  
“And they won’t know.” Erik fastens the back first, by touch alone. Pulls the right strap over his shoulder. These have tiny metal clamp-fasteners, not entirely standard, but not a surprise. Metal’s Erik’s artistic medium, after all. Charles hears himself whimper, as that side snaps into place.   
  
“No one will know,” Erik murmurs, pausing to kiss him again, drawn-out and leisurely assertive; Charles shivers as Erik’s tongue slips into his mouth, a kindly implacable invasion. Feels himself soften and give way, a yielding that begins deep down in his bones, his heart.   
  
“It’s a simple fashion statement,” Erik whispers over his lips, behind his ear, words soft and hot. “Nothing remarkable, Charles, nothing at all…except you know, and I know, what it means.” Fingers brush his ring, turning his unresisting hand. Charles wants to sink to the floor, to let Erik open him up and take him apart and take _him_ , nothing else in the world, nothing at all except Erik’s voice and Erik’s body against him, inside him, claiming him, letting him be free. His erection’s instant, and painful, trapped in fine suit trousers.   
  
“You know,” Erik purrs, and fastens the left strap, as Charles trembles, “that we’re coming home early, and you’ll be on your knees, wearing your collar, for me,” and Charles swears out loud as his cock jumps, pleading to be allowed release. Erik laughs. Lifts hands away. “We’ll be late.”   
  
“Please,” Charles whispers, begging, the elastic of the braces wrapped around his shoulders and his back, restraints Erik’s picked out for him, adorned him with, chosen for him. “Please, Erik, I—”   
  
“We can be a few minutes late, perhaps.” Erik’s smile is everything Charles loves, in that moment: smug, aroused, assured, playful, and oddly sweetly excited: they’re here, doing this, together.    
  
Erik’s still sometimes amazed by that, Charles knows. The amazement’s mutual. Here they are, they’ve survived everything the world can throw at them, and they’re in love.   
  
So, between unsteady breaths, through all the arousal—Erik’s hands’re warm on his waist, and Erik’s eyes’re intent and almost heartbreakingly happy—Charles manages, “We can be a few minutes late, yes, absolutely—artists’re meant to be—eccentric, right, and so they’ll all just decide— _oh_ —that you’re a terrible influence on me—oh _fuck_ —”   
  
Erik looks even more smug. Tightens his hand around Charles’s cock, over the thin expensive cloth of the suit. “On the bed. Sit. I want your mouth on my cock, Charles. And if you’re good…if you can be quick enough, and good enough, I may allow you to come. If we have time.” The other hand winds itself into Charles’s hair. Tugs. “If not, then you will wait, and you will walk around all evening with your throat sore and your arse plugged and your cock aching for me to touch you, clear?”   
  
Charles can only find a moan, at that. Erik pushes him down on the bed, not hard—Erik’s always thinking, even here, about ensuring safety, comfort, no injury to recently healed wounds—and flicks open trousers and draws himself out, long and full and stiff and unbearably erotic when Erik’s so neatly dressed otherwise. Charles shifts shoulders. Feels the tug of the braces.   
  
“Now,” Erik says, and that hand lands on his head again, and Charles does.    
  
Erik’s not gentle, hand holding him down, cock slamming into his mouth, his throat, relentlessly. Charles doesn’t want gentle. He wants to feel it. Wants to lick and suck at that length helplessly, as best he can, while each thrust bruises his throat, makes him choke, makes him moan and shudder and try to pull Erik deeper, tasting the sweet bitterness of early drops on the back of his tongue, foretelling the flood.   
  
He knows he’s good. He’s had years of practice. Except he’s never really had practice at all, not for this, because no one’s ever been Erik, nothing even close, nothing to compare.   
  
He’s in love, and he moans again and suckles harder at Erik’s cock, mouth wet and messy now, the way Erik likes him, visibly well-used and surrendered and belonging to Erik, and, oh, yes, _belonging_ , Erik’s ring on his finger and Erik’s restraints around his body and—   
  
He shudders head to toe, barely holding himself back from his own orgasm. He could come like this, Erik’s cock down his throat and Erik’s hand on his head and Erik’s voice swearing desperately in English and German, confusion of profanities and yes and Charles’s name and _so good_ —   
  
Erik comes abruptly, with a groan as if the peak almost hurts, physical relief. He’s buried deep in Charles’s throat, and Charles can’t breathe as that enormous length swells and pulses, hot jets of fluid; he has to swallow and keep trying to swallow, so much, too much, as the movement of his throat makes Erik groan again and shove into him one last time, hands heavy in his hair, Charles’s face pressed into Erik’s body, captured and held and complicit in his own submission.   
  
Erik pulls back, leaving sticky trails over Charles’s lips, cheek, chin. Charles coughs, gasps for air, collapses backwards onto the bed. Erik drops to both knees, shoves Charles’s legs apart, finds his neglected cock—Charles gasps out loud at the impact of cool air on superheated skin—and wraps a large hand around him, strokes hard and rough and dry except for where that tip’s leaking copious evidence of desire into Erik’s hand.   
  
Charles whimpers and cries and keens, arching his hips. It hurts just a bit—no lube, only his own wetness and that calloused palm—but the roughness highlights the pleasure, throwing each stroke into sharper relief. His throat’s sore and the remnants of Erik’s come and his own saliva are drying over his mouth and chin; he’s not sure he can move or sit up, and Erik’s on the floor and kneeling between his spread thighs and working at his cock and that’s both glorious and not right, humiliating and shameful and too arousing, begging his Dominant to get him off this way, and he can’t help it, he just _needs_ —   
  
“Shh,” Erik whispers, reading his mind, one hand finding his hip, a grounding solid weight. “I want to see you come, Charles, I want to make you come for me, like this, all over your suit and in my hand, because you know I want you to, so let go, come for me, let it go,” and Charles hears his own shocked little gasping cry at the words, and then he _does_ come, mind going blank with the ecstasy, overwhelmed by the lightning-strikes that sizzle through his veins.   
  
He opens his eyes, after a while, to Erik’s hand toying with his hair; oh, he realizes fuzzily, Erik’s got up from the floor, and probably also washed that hand; and then he shuts his eyes again, content.   
  
“Charles…” Erik sounds entirely amused. “Charles. Come on, time to wake up, _kätzchen_. It’s more than a few minutes, now. And I hope you own a spare suit.”   
  
“Kittens again,” Charles sighs, exhaustedly, “seriously, sir…”   
  
“Yes, well, you ought to see your hair.” Erik pets that hair again, though, affectionately. “Can you sit up?”   
  
“No. Thoroughly tired.” He does prop himself up on elbows. Enjoys the rawness in his own voice: another tangible, sensual reminder he’ll carry to the gala. Then considers his suit. And the distance to his closet. “Hmm.”   
  
“Is your knee—”   
  
“We did absolutely nothing to hurt my knee in any conceivable way. I only don’t at _all_ want to move.”   
  
Erik laughs. Slides off the bed, all wild-panther grace, and inspects Charles’s closet. There’s something brilliantly wonderfully incongruous about that: the fierce deadly-pawed cat contemplating domestic arrangements. “This one? Grey?”   
  
“Fine.” He lounges on the bed, appreciating all that economical elegance of motion. Erik’s fought for him. Fought beside him. Came for him in Sebastian Shaw’s grimy run-down office; held him through all the nights and mornings and afternoons of the aftermath, while Charles tried to recall how to walk, how to smile, how to want another body aligned with his.   
  
Erik proposed to him. And Charles said yes. And the plans for setting up their school-cum-artists’-studio-cum-halfway-house project lie stacked on that desk as well, projections for renovations and running costs and accreditations for transfer credit for, for example, scientific classes.   
  
Erik sits down beside him. The incoming rain whispers promises to the windowpane, outside. Tattoos fealty on the glass. “Not getting up?”   
  
“You wanted to dress me,” Charles observes lazily, and holds out beckoning arms. “Go on, then. We’ll be late.”   
  
“I love you,” Erik says, leaning down until they’re nose to nose, pale happy lakewater eyes meeting tropical oceans, sharing the sound of thunder. “And…in that case, you’re going to wear whatever accessories I choose for you. Visible, and not.”   
  
“Mmm,” Charles says, and lets Erik pull him upright, lips brushing in a fleeting sticky kiss. “You do know how much I enjoy your choices. Especially when they vibrate. I love you, too.”


	2. aisle (erik)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On their wedding day, Charles has a surprise for Erik.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously, takes place a few months after the end of the main fic. After they've had time for wedding preparations. :-)

The sky’s blue and gold and ribboned with white; the air’s crisp but not cold; the grass is greener than the brightest emerald and smells of the morning’s departed rain. Erik, at the end of the aisle, waits for Charles.  
  
He’s not impatient. He’s not distressed, though Charles is very slightly late. Charles won’t leave him here for long. Erik knows this with all of his heart. Charles has given him back that heart, and so: Erik waits.  
  
Charles had, that morning, kissed him, smiling. Had said, “I’ve got a surprise for you; would you mind terribly if we changed the ceremony? Only a bit.”  
  
Erik had raised eyebrows. But had agreed, mostly because Charles’s hand had been engaged in delicious exploration of Erik’s unfastened suit trousers. Charles has very talented hands. _Very_ talented.  
  
Traditionally they should’ve not seen each other before the wedding, of course. But Erik wasn’t about to leave Charles alone, tradition be damned; Charles hadn’t wanted to be left alone, so that’s just fine. The way that Charles, these days, is fine; healed, because he _is_ healed, is perfect, and the occasional lingering nightmares and the cane for walking are simply more pieces of the lush and beautiful mosaic that make up Charles Francis Xavier. Erik loves all those pieces. Unquestionably. With all his heart.  
  
This love does not mean he’s forgiven Sebastian Shaw for harming Charles. Never, not ever, not even with Sebastian’s ultimate unpleasant fate; not unpleasant enough, that, as nothing could ever be. Erik’s only barely begun, with Charles pressing kisses into his throat, his stomach, his inner thigh, to forgive himself. He’d known the extent of Shaw’s depravity. Could’ve done more, acted sooner—  
  
—but those thoughts have no place here. Not on his and Charles’s wedding day. Not under the sunshine and the curious clouds, popping back in at the behest of the wind to serve as witnesses. It’s a good kind of day. Symbolic, perhaps. Not serene, but glorious, billowing with life.  
  
The assembled guests—all of Emma’s escorts, every last one of them dressed to the nines and beaming with delight; Henry McCoy, who’d been at Charles’s side throughout the recovery; Emma herself, up at the altar, ordained for the day and ready to join them in matrimony here in the great state of New York—shift weight, glance at him, murmur. Erik ignores the murmurs. Stands calmly at the end of the grassy path, and waits.  
  
They’re getting married at home, on the lawn of the mansion that’d once been the ancestral Xavier estate and is now the Xavier-Lehnsherr House, refuge-in-progress for artists, escorts, students, runaways. The place where Charles had once greeted him at the door, eyes hopeful and uncertain above a too-large cardigan; the place where they’ve fought and made up and kissed desperately and made love slowly, tenderly, drawn-out and humming with blood-heated need. Science-fiction paperbacks and odd wayward metal sculpture-bits fill the shelves; Charles gives lectures on biology and chess—when not playing to keep his Grand Master title—and Erik occasionally lets students sit in on his creative process and has found himself inexplicably popular as an instructor in artistic technique. Their _other_ toys live upstairs these days, arranged neatly in drawers; they may never be able to use handcuffs, gags, certain knee-bending positions, in the aftermath, but that’s all right too: Charles loves the expensive silk scarves, and the polished sleek paddles, and most of all Erik’s hands on his skin.  
  
They’re good, these days. They _are_ healed, together, and safe. Himself and his lovely submissive. Charles can say it, now. Can say it and smile: not a self-flagellation, not a desperate need to feel good enough. Charles _is_ good enough. For himself. For Erik. Again: unquestionable.  
  
There’s a commotion back at the doors of the house. Where Charles will be emerging.  
  
The guests and the clouds and the sunbeams and Erik all turn. Erik takes a step forward.  
  
“Wait,” Emma Frost says. She sounds amused. Erik doesn’t turn back, but puts the glare into his voice. “If you know something—”  
  
“I do. And you don’t. Wait.”  
  
“Why did we ask you to do this,” Erik says, foot quivering. “I should have told him yes, I cared about having a proper ceremony—”  
  
“Sugar, you’ve not even kept kosher for years. And _Charles_ asked me to.”  
  
“Should’ve talked him out of it,” Erik mutters, not really meaning it, and inches forward.  
  
“If you take another step, I will be forced to stop you, and Charles will owe me a stupendously expensive dress. Stay put. It’s his surprise.”   
  
“But—”  
  
Whatever else he might’ve said vanishes. Because the crowds’re parting, the world’s full of silent applause, and Charles is walking across the emerald grass toward him.  
  
Charles. Walking. No cane. No support of any kind.  
  
Raven’s hovering at his side in case he falls over, pale blue bridesmaid gown rippling in the breeze, but Erik barely sees her.  
  
He only sees Charles. Under the sunbeams, picking each step across uneven ground with hesitant limping care, simple tailored grey suit matching Erik’s and the ring Erik’d made for him glinting light from his finger—  
  
Erik wants to take another step forward, and can’t, because he can barely breathe, just drinking in the sight, so beautiful and so brave and so amazing, Charles here and walking down the aisle and smiling just a little, almost to himself—  
  
Charles stumbles. Treacherous ground. Not quite flat, with all the tiny deceptive hillocks of grass.  
  
Erik’s heart slams up into his throat and all the guests tremble with the need to step in and Erik’s poised to run—  
  
Charles gets balance back, stands still for a second, breathing fast; waves away Raven’s reaching hand.  
  
Erik does run. But only a few steps. Halfway.  
  
Charles meets him there, breathless, giddy. “Hi—”  
  
“Charles,” Erik says, helpless, and kisses him.  
  
A sigh drifts through the assembled crowd. Emma Frost, eye-roll audible, observes, “You two could wait until after I’ve married you, on today of all days.”  
  
“No.” Definitive. And he kisses Charles again.  
  
Charles is laughing when permitted to surface, eyes bluer and clearer than the horizon in the distance. He leans on Erik’s arm for the rest of the walk; Erik holds him up, and forgets to inhale, just gazing at the line of his throat, the determination of his shoulders, the marvel that’s all of him.  
  
Charles pauses, as they make it back to Emma. “So…you were surprised, then. Thought you might’ve guessed. Not exactly subtle of me, this morning.”  
  
“Never do that again,” Erik says, “without telling me first, please, please, Charles, you—” and then stops because Charles is smiling. “Making it an order, sir?”  
  
“Request,” Erik decides—it’s a close call—and adds, “but with quite a lot of force behind it, if that helps.” Charles laughs, and Erik wants to hear that sound forever.  
  
“I’ve been practicing,” those blue eyes admit, sparkling up at him, safe in the circle of Erik’s arms, “my afternoon class, the one with Hank in it, is in fact not in the least about _Frankenstein_ ,” and Erik opens his mouth and Charles goes on, “I promise to never keep secrets from you, Erik, only today, this is the last one, you know all my secrets, you know all of me.”   
  
Erik tangles a hand in his hair, slides it to the nape of his neck, presses their foreheads together, vows, “I love you.”  
  
“I love you,” Charles says right back, and Emma sighs, and the sun flirts gleefully with the clouds overhead, and the world spins with joy.


	3. wedding night (charles and erik)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Erik has a present for Charles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're done! At least for now. As far as I know. Thank you, supporters and enablers and friends!

He’s married. He’s married to Erik. He’s gotten married to Erik in front of their friends and the world and the glowing sun.    
  
He’s feeling that glow reflected inside as well. Might be the excellent champagne; but that can’t account for the entirety and enormity of the quivering giddy feeling in his stomach each time he catches sight of Erik.    
  
Erik talking endearingly impatiently to guests. Erik being coerced into dancing with Charles’s sister. Erik actually cracking a smile at some comment she makes; and Charles, settled comfortably in a non-dancing chair in deference to his knee, ends up smiling too. Erik’s not looking at him, and it’s that very fact that’s so heartrendingly lovely. The small stolen moments, himself a voyeur—with implicit permission, of course—to Erik’s remembering how to be happy. And in that watching he’s happy as well.    
  
He doesn’t mind not dancing. He could mind—that’s something he might never have again, at least not with any kind of grace—but in fact he doesn’t, at least not just now. The ache in his leg’s present but unimportant, rather like the hole where a tooth’d once been, never the same but not especially problematic. Moira and Emma have taken it upon themselves to ply him with drinks and make him laugh and keep him company, though at the moment Emma’s at the bar and Moira’s been distracted by a nice young man named Sean and Charles has encouraged this lapse in attention. He doesn’t mind being alone, because he’s not alone, not with Erik a whisper’s-summons away.    
  
What he is, is happy.   
  
And married.   
  
And Erik’s. Decidedly so.   
  
He glances at the ring on his left hand, the ring Erik’d crafted for him out of woven metal and hope and determined fierce love. The setting sun sparks light from his finger.   
  
Erik says something to Raven. Spins her off the dance floor and into the arms of a waiting woman with luxurious dark hair and knowing eyes. Then twitches long legs into quick steps over to Charles’s side. “Are we done?”   
  
“So impatient,” Charles murmurs, tipping his head up for a kiss. “Sir.”   
  
“I want you,” Erik says, “and I’m tired of sharing you, Charles. They can enjoy the party. I would rather enjoy you.”   
  
“When you put it that way,” Charles agrees, and lets Erik pull him to his feet, arm under his shoulders. They run into the house breathless and laughing and clumsy with kisses, and leave the party to spin itself out on the mansion lawn, under emerging stars.   
  
Up the elevator, into their bedroom, hand in hand like truant children; Erik kisses his neck, walking him over to the bed, easing him down. They don’t talk about the trials of balance and weight distribution. Charles smiles, one hand cupping Erik’s face; Erik breathes a kiss into his palm. Charles grins.   
  
Erik, with efficient artist’s hands, strips him of his wedding-day suit. Brisk and obviously aroused, that gorgeous cock tenting the front of tailored trousers; but gentle, too, and as always the gentleness is tinged with wonder: Erik, rediscovering.   
  
When he’s naked and spread out over midnight-indigo sheets like a willing captive sacrifice, Erik skims a hand over his closest hip, smiling back with all those teeth. “Splendid.”   
  
Charles stretches luxuriantly, arms above his head, spine arching. “Yes, sir. Come here and fuck me now.”   
  
“ _So_ impatient.” Erik’s eyes dance with the reiteration, green and grey and blue as a winter kaleidoscope. “Shall I punish you for that, Charles?”   
  
“Up to you,” Charles says demurely, lifting his good leg, pointing a toe, flexing muscles simply to watch those eyes track the motion. “Sir.”   
  
Erik lets out a huff of amusement, exasperation, fondness. “Not yet. I have something for you. A present.”   
  
Charles forgets to be sensual and enticing and instead sits right up. “You—we agreed! No gifts!” He neglects to mention the rather large quantity of gold-leaf, suitable for gilding—Erik’s expressed an interest in experimenting with electroplating sculpture-art—that ought to be delivered on schedule the following morning.   
  
“It is for both of us.” Smug and tooth-filled and pleased; Charles consequently wants to kiss him. Erik adds, “Stay put. Orders. Don’t move.”   
  
Charles puts his head on one side. “Technically, sir, that’s not—”   
  
“You may breathe, _kätzchen._ And be comfortable. But no getting up.”   
  
“Yes, sir.” He watches while Erik crosses to the dresser. There’s a box that Charles does not recall sitting on the top, black and square and fascinating.   
  
Erik comes back. “Here.”   
  
Charles raises eyebrows. “Such ceremony. Here, indeed.”   
  
“If you don’t want it,” Erik says, which because he’s smiling means _I love you_.    
  
“I didn’t say that. Look, not at all moving. Not even attempting to pluck it from your hands.”   
  
“Probably a good idea.” Erik opens the box. “Because I believe it is my job to put it on you.”   
  
And Charles, faced with the gleaming elegant circle of mingled metal, multihued swirls beaten into a single slim collar, catches his breath and can only manage, “Oh.”   
  
It matches his ring. Because Erik had asked, once, in another enchanted moment, whether he’d wear one, at least at home, at least in the bedroom. Because Charles had said yes, and later, after everything, yes again.    
  
And Erik’s made this for him. For them.   
  
He’s not quite crying. But it’s close.   
  
  
Erik, alert to every emotion in those expressive eyes, finds himself holding his breath. Charles’s eyelashes are very slightly damp, oceans overflowing. Good? Bad? Too much? Too soon? They’d talked about it, but not recently; he’d thought Charles would approve, would say yes again, would love the tangible symbol and weight, but—   
  
“Erik,” Charles whispers. “It’s lovely. Yes. I—yes.”   
  
“Yes,” Erik echoes, not because he doesn’t believe it—Charles would never say it and not mean it—but because he needs to say it, to claim the affirmation, for it to be real.   
  
Charles looks from the collar to his face. “Yes!”   
  
“Mine,” Erik ventures, testing; he gets that brilliant smile, the truest sweetest one Charles has, reserved only for him. He’s selfish. He loves that that’s his.   
  
“Yours,” Charles says. “Please.”   
  
He comes to stand in front of Charles, at the side of the bed; Charles obligingly lifts that head, one hand gathering slightly too-long hair out of the way. And then, being Charles and therefore irrepressible: “How does it work? I mean the lock? Is that a lock? Oh—is that the key?”   
  
“It is. I won’t…I’ll leave it here. In the box. If you need to take it off.” In case, just in case; he knows what memories Charles might have. Must have. Will always have.   
  
Charles touches his throat, fleetingly. “I doubt I will, but…well. Thank you, Erik.”    
  
“For here,” Erik says. “For us. At home. _My_ submissive, Charles.” Not in public. Not for everyday. Not in front of students here at this place they’re building together. At home in the bedroom because they both want that; because sometimes Charles needs that, the anchor. But this is private. Shared. Intimate. “Do you want it on?”   
  
“Now…” Charles smiles through the lingering suggestion of tears. “On our wedding night. Yes, please.”   
  
And Erik’s hands set the graceful band of metal around his throat, and Erik’s hands turn the key; and Charles looks up with parted lips and a wordless shining intimation of joy behind those bottomless eyes.   
  
Erik’s hands don’t shake, but only because Erik’s very good at controlling his reactions. “Charles,” he says, half an order, half a plea, half a hope that this truly is all right. Too many halves; but that’s how they’ve always been, himself and Charles. Messy and defiant and _more_.   
  
Charles isn’t exactly smiling—the moment’s too hushed and breakable and full of light for that—but the smile’s there regardless, when one hand lifts to brush polished rounded metal. “Can I see? How it looks?”   
  
“Of course.” A large standing mirror, Victorian and hinting at decadent erotically fantastical nights of wood and wardrobes, shimmers gleefully in the corner; they’ve used that mirror before, positioned it beside the bed, watched themselves reflected in cool watery glass, bare skin and sweat and come and bodies tangled in slick heated joining. He walks Charles over to it now, hand heavy at the back of the collar, the nape of Charles’s neck.   
  
Charles breathes in, astonished and reverent. Erik watches his eyes, watches him in the mirror, as he trails a finger over the tangible symbol of this connection they share. The metal’s warmer now, embracing Charles’s skin.   
  
Charles studies himself: paleness in twilight, freckles standing out like cinnamon-dust, unheeded old scars, the shine of Erik’s metal. Erik, standing behind him, curiously out of breath, remains dressed; this feels at once both blasphemous and correct, eerily so. Charles is willingly naked but for his collar; Erik’s clothed and tall and stern, not laid bare, and of course he’s disrupting the intimacy of the moment but that’s all right, that’s what he does, himself with his own old scars and cloak of anger. He closes doors; Charles opens them. And Charles loves him.   
  
Erik loves them, together; and Erik will tear out pieces of his soul bit by bit if he has to, to keep Charles just this way, eyes like splendid promises of blue-shaded forever.   
  
Charles breathes out, and turns. He’s smiling, visibly this time, when he meets Erik’s gaze in person and not through the luminous intermediary of the mirror. “I love it. But you knew I would, sir.”   
  
“I hoped,” Erik starts, and then stops, hearing his own words. I hoped. I hope.   
  
“I love you,” Charles says, and goes up on tiptoe, slightly more weight on one leg than the other, to kiss him squarely on the lips. The kiss is bright and coruscating and full of merriment and certainty. Erik says, “I love you, Charles,” and thinks: thank you, thank you, you love me, I love you, I know.


End file.
